‘Get Low’ Director Aaron Schneider on Working With Robert Duvall, Bill Murray

Though “Get Low” is Aaron Schneider’s first feature film as a director, the filmmaker is hardly new to the world of Hollywood. The USC graduate began his career directing music videos and commercials, before branching into cinematography, shooting for both television (“Supernatural”) and film (“Kiss the Girls”).

Schneider says he came to the attention of “Get Low” producer Dean Zanuck courtesy of his short film “Two Soldiers,” which won an Oscar in 2004. Based on a short story by William Faulkner, that film was set in the 1940s, the same era as “Get Low,” which stars Robert Duvall as a grizzled hermit who comes out of seclusion and asks a local funeral parlor (run by Bill Murray and Lucas Black) to throw him a “living funeral” party. Sissy Spacek rounds out the cast as a former flame of Duvall’s character.

Speakeasy talked with Schneider about how he assembled his cast and what the rehearsal process was like.